The late Karl-Heinz Ilting attributed to Hegel what Ilting called a „democratic” and „republican” concept of state. In Ilting’s account, Hegel, inspired by his vision of Attic democracy and the Roman Republic, formulated the concept as early as 1795, continued to assert and develop it in his Jena and Heidelberg writings, and then expressed it most strikingly in his Berlin lectures of 1818/19, where the classical elements of the concept were joined to elements of modern thought, especially that of Rousseau, and applied to the developing 19th century nation-state. Hegel then carried the concept into his published version of his Rechtsphilosophie, which appeared in October 1820, where it is most evident in the opening sections, i. e. §§ 257 and 258, of Hegel’s treatment of the state itself.
However, according to Ilting, under the pressure of the Karlsbad Decrees, which came as Hegel was preparing his 1818/19 version of his Rechtsphilosophie for publication, Hegel delayed publication of the work for a year in order to make additional revisions, and then in his published version shrouded the concept in obscure formulations, contradicted it, especially in lines added to his „Remarks” for the published version, and in fact moved in the course of §§ 257—270 to endorse an authoritarian state, in which only political office holders „know and will the universal”, while the rest of society’s members are restricted to an attitude of „trust” in government and personal concern only for the „limited and finite” ends of civil society.1
In sum, according to Ilting, Hegel’s vision of an „organic”, republican-democratic state, so strikingly asserted up to 1820, disintegrated in the Philosophy of Right of 1820 into the dualistic picture of an authoritarian political state on one side, and a civil society of apolitical individuals on the other: „Hegel (in § 270) ascribes to the bearers of state power what he should, in accordance with his own republican approach, have demanded for all citizens of the state: political self-consciousness. … /I/n the course of his account, Hegel increasingly loses sight of his initial premise: In § 257 the state ,exists … mediately in individual self-consciousness’; in § 270 the ,mind knowing and willing itself of the state exists in the selfconsciousness of office-holders, while the political sentiment of the citizen and subject is reduced to the ,trust’ that his interest, both substantive and particular, is contained and preserved in another’s (i. e. in the state’s) interest and end’ ” (§ 268).2
I think that Ilting’s thesis is mistaken, that Hegel did not shift his idea of state between §§ 257 and 270 of the Philosophy of Right of 1820, and that § 270 is in fact not only a demand for political self-consciousness for all citizens of the state, but a concise description of what true citizenship requires by way of knowledge. Ilting’s mistake stems in particular from his misreading of §§ 260 and 270, and more broadly from his failure to recognize that Hegel’s §§ 257—270 are an expanded — and at times, to be sure, obscure – restatement of the doctrine on „political sentiment” that Hegel had worked out in his earlier (i. e. 1817—1820) lectures on the Rechtsphilosophie. There, as we shall see, „political sentiment” is essentially knowledge, a complex social-political consciousness and self-consciousness, which animates the state as organism and effects its universal end. That Hegel conceived of political sentiment (or „patriotism”) as essentially knowledge seems to have gone largely unnoticed by commentators.3
In what follows, I will focus first on Hegel’s treatment of political sentiment in the 1817–1820 versions of his Rechtsphilosophie, and then in light of that review §§ 257–270 of the Philosophy of Right of 1820.
The first text to be noted is § 123 of Hegel’s Heidelberg lectures of 1817/18, as preserved in Wannenmann’s Mitschrift.4 This § 123 corresponds to what would appear in the published version of 1820 as § 257, the opening § on the state as such. Indeed, the two §§ are almost identical in wording. In § 123, Hegel speaks of the „sentiment” of individual self-consciousness toward the state: „The state is the actuality of ethical spirit as universal will manifest and revealed to itself, knowing and accomplishing, having its immediate existence in custom and its mediated existence in the knowing and activity of individual self-consciousness such that this individual self-consciousness, in virtue of its sentiment — knowing the state to be its substance, its end, and the product of its activity — has its freedom in it” (145). The stress in this text on the self-conscious individual, in whose „knowing and activity” the state has its „mediated existence”, is underscored in Hegel’s Remark to this § and to the one that follows it. There he states that „Spirit [of which „the state is the actuality”] has its actuality in the individual self-consciousness” (§ 123 Remark; 145); and further, „Freedom is pure activity, and this activity as freedom is self-consciousness. The idea therefore has its reality (Realität) in individual self-consciousness” (§ 124 Remark; 146). For Ilting, the „idea” Hegel speaks of here is his idea of a republican-democratic state of free, sell-conscious individuals.5 If so, then one must say that the state has its reality in the self-conscious individuals who comprise it, and one must understand that the „right of the state” means the right of the individuals, when Hegel goes on to say: „It is the absolute right of the state that it be actualized through individual self-consciousness” (Ibid.). Hegel could just as well have said, „it is the absolute right of individual self-consciousness that it be actualized as state”. In any event, political sentiment as referred to in this text of 1817/18 is, in the first instance, knowledge: It is the self-conscious individual’s „knowing the state to be its substance, its end, and the product of its activity”.
A year later, in his Berlin lectures of 1818/19, recorded in Homeyer’s Mitschrift6, Hegel discussed political sentiment in his § 118. There he refers to it as „sentiment of the state” (or „state sentiment”: die Gesinnung des Staats) and „universal sentiment” (die allgemeine Gesinnung). He identifies it as one of the two guarantees of the „actuality of freedom” within the „organism of the state”. The other guarantee is the „mechanism of the state” (der Mechanismus des Staats), about which more in a moment. The organism of the state is the state’s „constitution”, and this organism is articulated inwardly in estates (Stände) and functions (Geschäfte) with their specific works and interests. Political/universal sentiment, interest, and effort develop out of individuals’ pursuit of these particular works and interests: „The one-sided extremes, in which the actuality of freedom is made fast, are the sentiment and the mechanism of the state. But the authentic actuality of freedom is the organism of the state, namely its inner necessity, the division (Unterscheidung) of the state into its concrete estates and the abstract functions therein that derive from choice (Willkür), so that there results out of these works and interests, which are defined by the idea, the universal interest and work and so too the universal sentiment — the constitution” (269). Hegel’s Remark to this § is interesting and important. On one hand, he says, the „sentiment of the citizens” (die Gesinnung der Bürger) alone, without the objective mechanism of institutions, cannot effect freedom: If it is, e. g. a „merely general” patriotic willing, then its „content is merely abstract”, not specified or focused by extant public arrangements; if it remains simply „in the form of sentiment” (by which I take Hegel to mean a form other than knowledge, e. g. mere affectivity), then it will be „inactive and ineffective”; and if it is active while remaining „abstract”, then it becomes „arbitrariness (the fanaticism of the French Revolution)” (Ibid.). But neither, on the other hand, is the mechanism alone enough: „The living actuality of the state is the unity of the two” (270). The political sentiment of selfconscious individuals is, then, an indispensable co-principle of the state-as-organism. As knowledge, the activity of spirit, it would seem to be the animating principle of the state organism.
To this point in his Remark, Hegel has referred only to the spheres of particular needs and interests, the estates and functions mentioned in the § itself. His Remark continues in this vein: „The whole must permeate everything, yet be distributed; the individuals must know that in their particular work they are active for the whole and must have this whole as their end. … The moments, members must have their particular freedom, and the state must be brought forth out of them. The constitution is the unity of the sentiment and the mechanism, of the inwardness and (the) externality” (Ibid.). Then he extends his discussion to the political institutions of the state: The inner articulation of the state-organism is in terms not only of estates, but also of a division of political „powers”. Thus, the „mechanism” of the state includes all of society’s institutions, civil and political. Political sentiment animates this mechanism and functions within it, superceding the distinction between particular and universal, or better, grasping the universal dimension of the particular, and so bringing the universal forth: „The specialization in estates and the division of powers are together essential conditions in the state’s actuality, one of the guarantees of freedom. This is based on the idea of life (Lebendigkeit). Only thus can each moment of the functions receive its right and be treated objectively, and the subjective totality of arbitrariness (Willkür) is diminished. In this, the organization goes to the side other than that of the mechanism, (to the) side of understanding. This particular sphere is raised to a totality, if the function comes to be sincere and to be really carried on, so that it becomes a reflection of the idea. The whole emerges from this fulfillment of the individual” (Ibid.).
I take Hegel to be saying, in the rather cryptic latter part of this passage, that political sentiment must involve a grasp by the individual of how his particular function within society relates to the whole („becomes a reflection of the idea”), such that when exercized in accord with that sentiment („to be sincere and to be really carried on”), it yields both the fulfillment of the individual and the actuality of the whole. I do not see implied here, however, any demand that the individual participate directly in governmental functions as such. Knowledge of how these relate to one’s particular function might be said to be implicitely demanded; and also knowledge of how one could come to participate directly in them, e. g. come to hold public office; but there is no requirement that one (all) directly do so.
At this point in his Remark to § 118, Hegel for the first time introduces the notion of „trust” (Zutrauen) as a feature of political sentiment. Immediately after the lines just quoted, he continues: „The certitude of this, the consciousness that others are working for the same idea, gives the individual trust. Thus is his sphere justified for him, and it holds true interest for him” (Ibid.).
So, knowledge of how one’s particular function fits within the whole and contributes to it while fulfilling oneself, together with knowledge that one’s fellows know likewise and act accordingly within their particular functions, justifies one’s function as having a significance that is „political” in a broad sense: a consciously effected contribution to the whole, within an understood order of interrelated functions, which includes also the directly „political” ones articulated in a „division of powers”. Trust in others, grounded in the knowledge that they share one’s political sentiment, would extend to those who are in directly political functions as well as to those who are not, so long as one knew that they, too, were „working for the same idea”. Although Hegel has been referring in this Remark explicitely to those whose functions lie in the sphere of particularity, nothing he has said restricts trust to them, or suggests that trust also in those who hold directly political functions would be anything essentially different. In neither case would trust be a substitute for knowledge that both oneself and others are „active for the whole”; in neither case would trust be mere faith in others on the part of one who lacks such knowledge.
Hegel’s next lectures on the Rechtsphilosophie, his last before publishing the work, took place in the Winter Semester of 1819/20. Our record of them is an anonymously authored Nachschrift, the text of which is not divided into Hegel’s §§ and Remarks, but rather has the form of a continuous discourse, which rather closely follows the thematic order of the other versions.7 In this text, when he discusses political sentiment, Hegel again affirms that the institutions of family and civil society, of the sphere of particularity, are essential parts of the constitution. Moreover, he says, the members of society must recognize them to be such, or society will appear bifurcated into a governmental organization on the one hand, and a crude and formless mass of particular activites and interests on the other; the state would not be, in the consciousness of its members, an organic whole: „To the constitution there belongs first of all the organization of state power that wills the universal as such; but secondly the institutions of the particular spheres are also part of it. When people speak of the constitution, what they often mean is just the organization of active universality as such (die Organisation, wie das Allgemeine als solches tätig ist). But this universal is not something in itself; it sets forth and requires (setzt voraus) the family and civil society. So these institutions are also essential to the whole of a constitution. When people speak of the constitution, they often mean simply that there is organization somewhere above, at some higher level. If this is the case, then the particular stands over against the universal as a kind of raw mass” (227).
I take Hegel to be saying three things here: 1) If there is organization only „somewhere above”, then society is bifurcated into abstract spheres of universality and particularity; 2) if people think that there is organization only „somewhere above”, then their state is not, in their consciousness of it, an organic whole; and 3) if it is not in their consciousness of it an organic whole, then it is not in fact an organic whole: If the citizens are not conscious of themselves as active in, as well as dependent upon, an organic whole, then that whole is not actual – its end as universal will not come about. And so, immediately following the lines just quoted, Hegel continues: „This is what political sentiment essentially is, that the individuals know that their existence (Bestehen) depends essentially on the universal. More precisely, this patriotic sentiment means that the individual knows that his particular aims can be only through the universal. This is what the patriotism of the English often shows itself to be. To this extent, political sentiment is a mediating (ein Vermittelndes). Its content is the particular, and the universal appears as the firm binding (das feste Band) thanks to which the particular spheres persist (bestehen). But it is through this mediation that the end of the universal itself comes about” (Ibid.).8
Here too, then, political sentiment is essentially knowledge, but here specified as knowledge of one’s dependence on the whole, on the universal. Hegel does not mention „trust” in this text, but we may suppose that had he wished to, he could have included it here as confidence in others, rooted in the knowledge that they, like oneself, recognize their dependence on the whole.
Nothing Hegel says about political sentiment in these passages suggests that it might be limited only to those exercizing directly political functions, 1. e. functions lying within that „organization of state power that wills the universal as such”. Quite the contrary, he is plainly speaking about all of society’s members. In fact one might say that insofar as political sentiment is that mediation of particular and universal, a willing and acting on behalf of the universal in and through a particular function, it would appear that it is to be found above all in those who do not fill directly political functions, where the end is „the universal as such”. This would in turn mean that, for Hegel, it is more through those who do not exercize directly political functions, than through those who do, that „the end of the universal itself comes about”. The real burden of effecting the end of the state lies with the ordinary citizens, who act in the sphere of particular interests and ends, but do so in a way that is informed by political sentiment.
The differences in the texts that we have seen, from 1817—1820, do not, in my view, reflect an evolution in Hegel’s notion of political sentiment. Rather, these texts present altogether a complex, but quite stable and coherent concept, with the texts of 1818/19 and 1819/20 filling out what the text of 1817/18 stated so concisely as „individual self-consciousness… knowing the state to be its substance, its end, and the product of this activity”. Thus, to know the state as one’s substance is to know that one’s existence and particular well-being depend on it and can be only within it (1819/20). To know that the state is one’s end and the product of one’s activity is to know that in one’s particular work one is active for the whole and must have as one’s end the whole, which comes out of one’s own fulfillment (1818/19); or it is to know the dimension of universality present in the particularities of social life and institutions, civil as well as political, and to know that it is this knowledge itself that actualizes the universal (1819/20). Again, to know the state as one’s substance is to know one’s dependence on one’s fellow citizens, whom one knows to share this sentiment (1818/19). Finally, the correlate of this complex knowing, the framework within which it operates, and which in fact it animates, is the mechanism of the „constitution”, the totality of society’s institutions, organized in a rational way, i. e. „defined by the idea” (1817/18, 1818/19). With all of this in mind, we turn now to the Philosophy of Right of 1820.
As noted earlier, Hegel’s treatment of the state as such in this work begins with § 257; and, also as noted earlier, this § repeats almost verbatim § 123 of his lectures of 1817/18, in which great stress was given to the importance of the individual in the state. § 257 reads: „The state is the actuality of the ethical idea. It is ethical spirit as substantial will manifest and revealed to itself, thinking and knowing itself, and accomplishing what it knows in so far as it knows it. It has its immediate existence in custom and its mediated existence in the self-consciousness, knowledge and activity of the individual, who also, in virtue of his sentiment towards the state, as the essence, end, and product of his activity, has in the state his substantive freedom” (Knox, 155; transl, modified).
This stress on the individual continues in § 258, where the state as substantial will is said to have its actuality in „the particular self-consciousness once that consciousness has been raised to consciousness of its universality”, and then in the Remark to this §, where „universally valid life” is said to be both the „starting point” and the „result” of the individual’s „particular satisfaction, activity, and mode of conduct”. What was in 1817/18 described as „the right of the state to be actualized through individual selfconsciousness” is here called the individual’s „highest duty”, viz. to be „a member of the state”, in which alone true freedom obtains (Knox. 156).
In § 260, Hegel develops these ideas further, in the familiar terms of individuals discerning the universal dimension of their particular functions and acting so as to achieve their particular fulfillment, and through that actualizing the universal. In moving to the „complete development” of their „personal individuality and its particular interests”, individuals come also to „know and will the universal” as their „substantive spirit” and the end toward which they act. In willing their particular ends they also come to will the universal, „such that the universal prevails and achieves completion only along with the particular interests and through particular knowing and willing, and the individuals do not live as private persons only for their particular interests, but rather also will in and for the universal and are active in a way that is conscious of this end”.9
Hegel goes on to emphasize, as he had in his 1819/20 lectures, the dependence of the particular interests and functions on the universal, which is „the end immanent within them”,.and he again notes the „unity of (the state’s) universal end and aim with the particular interest of individuals” (§ 261). He observes, in somewhat obscure, „speculative” fashion, that individuals come to hold their particular functions through „circumstances,… caprice and… personal choice” (§ 262), and on this point he refers his reader to § 185 and the Remark to it, in his treatment of „Civil Society”, where he had related this exercize of choice to the reality of „subjective freedom”, which is a source of the „prodigious strength and depth” of „the principle of the modern states” (§ 260). He then states again what he had said in earlier lectures: The universal is present in the spheres of particularity in the institutions of family and civil society (§ 263). Nothing that Hegel says in these §§ is startling or out of keeping with what he had been saying at least since 1817/18.
Ilting agrees that through these §§ , Hegel still retains the republican-democratic intentions of his 1818/19 Rechtsphilosophie: „… § 264 of PhR 1820 may be summarized thus: in the state, individuals have private and public rights; their private rights they receive directly in the spheres of family and civil society; their public rights are actualized in two ways; in the social institutions which administer their particular interests, they have ,their substantive self-consciousness’ (in so far as they see themselves represented in these institutions); to the extent that they are actively engaged in these institutions, they receive, in addition, the opportunity of ,an occupation and activity directed on a universal end’. It is thus clear that Hegel is here merely reiterating what he had already said in § 260 of PhR 1820 (§ 116 of PhR 1818/19).”10
As said already, I do not agree with Ilting what in § 260 Hegel has individuals aiming „at none but the universal end”. Nor do I agree with him when he says, immediately following the lines just quoted, that „in § 264, by contrast, the ,occupation and activity directed on a universal end’ is restricted to the institutions of civil society whose aim is precisely ,limited and finite’ (§ 265).”11 Hegel makes no such incredible turnabout. Actually, in § 265, he largely restates what he had said in earlier lectures: „These institutions [of family and civil society] are the components of the constitution (i. e. of rationality developed and actualized) in the sphere of particularity. They are, therefore, the firm foundation not only of the state but also of the citizens’ trust in it and sentiment towards it. They are the pillars of public freedom since in them particular freedom is realized and rational, and therefore there is in them the union of freedom and necessity” (Knox, 163.). No more than in those earlier lectures does Hegel, in §§ 264 and 265, intend to restrict the individuals’ interest to what is merely „limited and finite”.12
What does seem new ih § 265 is that „trust” is not said to be in other individuals, but in „the state”. Yet this may be taken to mean simply that one’s trust is in the community or totality of others who, in sharing one’s political sentiment and framework of institutions, constitute (along with oneself) „the state”.
Hegel’s § 266 is very obscure. Ilting is right, I think, when he characterizes it as marking „the transition, still more implicit than explicit, from the social to the political plane”.13 In § 266, Hegel chooses to make this transition, which will be completed by § 270, in a highly condensed and metaphysically rendered summary of the relationship between individuals with their political sentiment, and the state as organic totality. Expressed in less metaphysical terms the § says something like the following: The self-conscious individuals („spirit”) are actual and aware of themselves in the totality of their institutions, not only insofar as these have the necessity of a rational organization, but also in the dynamism and vitality of their organic interaction. The state, as the community of self-conscious individuals objectified in the institutions that their political sentiment animates, is „aware of itself as its own object and end”, and its rational structure is thus „the shape of freedom as well”. Far from marking a departure from Hegel’s 1818/19 idea of state, this § 266 reasserts it – to be sure, in an obscure way.14
Hegel’s transition through § 266 from the social to the explicitely political plane is evidenced in § 267, where the institutional correlate of the individuals’ political sentiment is identified not as the whole of the constitution, civil and political institutions together, but as the „strictly political” institutions in their own organic interrelationship. Political sentiment, as knowledge, now (as in the earlier versions of the Rechtsphilosophie) is said to have explicitely political content, the „political constitution” (§ 269), whose „various powers” will receive separate and extended treatment in the subsequent section (sc. §§ 272—320) of the Philosophy of Right.
Again, as in the earlier versions of the Rechtsphilosophie, the doctrinal development in these §§ does not reflect a change of mind on Hegel’s part as to the nature or „content” of political sentiment; he has not in the span of the two §§ , 266 and 267, replaced the content provided by the institutions of family and civil society with a new content, the strictly political institutions of the political „powers”. Rather, he has shifted focus from one part of the overall content to another. One should, therefore, take Hegel’s §§ 267–269 as expressing his insistence that full political sentiment must involve knowledge not only of the institutions within which one achieves particular fulfillment, but also of the institutions of „state in the strictly political sense”. The genuine citizen is one who is informed and concerned about the nature and function of the governmental and legislative institutions of his society as well as the „private” and „civil” ones, and about the organic interconnection of them all. The political sentiment of such an individual can rightly be said to be at once a „product” and a „source” of those institutions; and thus § 268 reads: „Political sentiment, patriotism pure and simple, is assured conviction with truth as its basis… and a volition which has become habitual.”15 „In this sense it is a product of the institutions subsisting in the state when rationality is actually present in it, while it is through action in accordance with them that rationality operates (ihre Betätigung er-hált)” (Knox, 163–4; transl, modified.).
The institutions Hegel refers to here include those of family and civil society (the educative sources of the political Bildung whose result is precisely developed political sentiment), as well as those of the „strictly political state”. We may, therefore, take Hegel’s second sentence in this text as yet another attempt on his part to express how it is that „the will and action” of individuals have the state as both their „starting point” and their „result” (§ 258 Remark), both their „essence” and their „product” (§ 257).16 In this respect, § 268 coheres perfectly with §§ 257 and 258, and one is hard pressed to see how Hegel is in any significant respect moving away from the idea of state asserted in those earlier §§ . § 268 then continues: „This sentiment is, in general, trust (which may pass over into a greater or lesser degree of educated insight), or the consciousness that my interest, both substantive and particular, is contained and preserved in another’s (here, the state’s) interest and end, i. e. in the other’s relation to me as an individual. In this way, this very other is immediately not an other in my eyes, and in being conscious of this fact, I am free” (Knox, 164; slightly modified.).17
If Hegel was, as Ilting insists, writing with an eye to possible censorship, then this passage, when read in the context of the entire development, represents a masterful achievement on Hegel’s part: It restates what he had held all along about political sentiment and its attendant trust, but it does so in a way that would arouse no suspicions of „republican” or „democratic” intentions. Hegel then goes on, as mentioned above, to insist in § 269 that political sentiment have as its „particularly defined content” the „various members” of the political „or-ganism of the state”, i. e. the „political constitution” with its rationally determined (durch die Natur des Begriffes bestimmt) powers, their functions and activities.
§ 270 is the culmination, a summary and transitional conclusion, of what Hegel was developing step-by-step, carefully and at times obscurely, beginning at § 257. In § 270 Hegel chose once again to express himself in metaphysical terms and a dense, complex construction. But these merely mask what is a trenchant summary of what had been developed immediately before. Indeed, reduced to its essentials, the first part of the § reads like a slightly embellished restatement of the core of §257 and may be paraphrased thus: The state, as a necessarily self-sustaining and rationally ordered process whose end is the universal interest and within that the preservation of particular interests, has its substantiality in the self-conscious and free spiritual individual who has passed through the forming process of education (Bildung).18
For Ilting, the „self-conscious and free spiritual individual” referred to here means political office-holders only; but Hegel, it seems to me, is really referring to the citizen, the subject of political sentiment, in general. Interestingly, nothing in Hegel’s lectures on the Rechtsphilosophie in 1817/18, 1818/19, or 1819/20, according to the editors of these materials, corresponds exactly to this first part of § 270. In fact, the part seems to me to restate in condensed form ideas spread throughout the earlier versions, e. g. § 130 of Hegel’s 1817/18 lectures.19 If this is so, then insofar as the earlier lectures referred, as we have seen, to individuals as members of the state in general, we may suppose that this first part of § 270 does likewise. Yet, Ilting was so sure of his interpretation that in his edition of Hegel’s published Philosophy of Right (1820) and of the Nachschriften of Hotho (1822/23) and von Griesheim (1824/25), he put an editorial title above this §270 that describes its contents thus: „§ 270 ,The idea of the state, the state institutions and the holders of state power’.”20
This interpretation, in my view, is untenable: in the first part of § 270 Hegel simply reexpresses in a rather obscure way what he had long held. Accordingly, what he then goes on to say in this § about „the state” amounts to a broad political paradigm: It does not refer to just the corps of political office-holders, but rather to the entire community of individuals who have genuine political sentiment; as such, furthermore, it is implicitely a strengthened restatement of what genuine citizenship involves: „The state, therefore, knows what it wills and knows it in its universality, i. e. as something thought. Hence it works and acts by reference to consciously adopted ends, known principles, and laws which are not merely implicit but are actually present to consciousness; and further, it acts with precise knowledge of existing conditions and circumstances, inasmuch as its actions have a bearing on these” (Knox, 165).21
Read as a statement of what citizenship in a rational political community involves – work and action that is directed toward consciously adopted ends, and that is informed by known principles and laws as well as precise knowledge of relevant conditions and circumstances — Hegel’s § 270 can be seen to be utterly opposed in spirit to the repressive authoritarianism expressed in the Karlsbad Decrees, which mandated censorship of university teaching and „scientific” publication. Accordingly, if Hegel’s doctrine on „political sentimerit” as expressed in the texts we have seen is an adequate basis for judgment, then we may conclude that he did not in 1820 yield to repression: He did not surrender his philosophical principles, nor did he renounce the idea of the state that is found in his earlier lectures.
* „Political sentiment” is English for Hegel’s „politische Gesinnung”, which might, as some colleagues have suggested, be better rendered as „political disposition”. I’ve chosen to use „sentiment” rather than „disposition” in this paper, because that accords with T. M. Knox’s standard English version of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. This paper was written as part of a larger project in the course of a Fulbright Year (1985–86) in the Federal Republic of Germany, where my academic home has been the kulturwissen-schaftliche Fakultät, Universität Bayreuth.
1 Hegel’s Concept of the State and Marx’s Early Critique, in: 2. A. Pelczynski (ed.), The State and Civil Society. Studies in Hegel’s Political Philosophy, Cambridge 1984, pp. 83–113.
2 Ibid. 111.
3 Commentators tend to stress either „trust” or „affectivity” as the essential aspect in Hegel’s notion of political sentiment: e. g. Klaus Hartmann (129) and Merold Westphal (88 — 90) in their essays in the Pelczynski volume cited above.
4 G. W. F. Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts. Die Mitschriften Wannenmann (Heidelberg 1817/18) und Homeyer (Berlin 1818/19). Herausgegeben, eingeleitet und erläutert von Karl-Heinz Ilting, Stuttgart 1983. I give the page numbers of texts from this volume in the body of my article, in parentheses. Translations of texts from this volume and other volumes used below, with the exception of the Philosophy of Right of 1820, are my own. For the Philosophy of Right of 1820, I use T. M. Knox’s version (Oxford 1962) except where indicated.
5 Hegel’s Concept of the State…, e. g. 94–95.
6 For the Homeyer material, I use the edition cited in n. 4 above.
7 G. F. W. (sic) Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts. Die Vorlesungen von 1819/20 in einer Nachschrift. Herausgegeben von Dieter Henrich, Frankfurt/M. 1983. Page numbers of texts from this volume are in parentheses.
8 This text of 1819/20 echoes Hegel’s Remark to § 141 of his 1817/18 lectures: „Dies ist besonders in England der Fall, und der Patriotismus nimmt diese Wendung. Alle haben das Interesse, daß der Staat sich erhalte; denn ihr besonderes Interesse haben alle in ihren besonderen Sphären, und diese besondere Sphäre besteht nur durch den Staat. Indem sie diese besondere Sphäre in ihrem Stand erhalten, arbeiten sie für das Allgemeine, welches nur durch diese Gegliederung besteht” (Ed. cited in n. 4 above, 168).
9 Cf. Knox, 160–61. The German reads: „… so daß weder das Allgemeine ohne das besondere Interesse, Wissen und Wollen gelte und vollbracht werde, noch daß die Individuen bloß für das letztere als Privatpersonen leben und nicht zugleich in und für das Allgemeine wollen und eine dieses Zwecks bewußte Wirksamkeit haben” (Frankfurt/M. 1970, 407). The corresponding passage from § 116 (1818/19) reads: „… [so] daß weder das besondere Interesse, Wissen und Wollen vollbracht werde, noch die Privatpersonen bloß in diesem und für dieses leben und nicht zugleich in dem und für das Allgemeine wollen und selbstbewußte Wirksamkeit haben” (Ilting ed. cited in n. 4 above, 268). Ilting bases much of his case on this § 260, claiming that here Hegel has the individuals willing the universal „in the light of the universal” and with their activity „consciously aimed at none but the universal end” (as Knox translates it); whereas later, in § 265, Hegel will, according to Ilting, restrict individuals other than office-holders to the „finite and limited” aims of family and civil society, and then in § 270 attach universal aims exclusively to the office-holders. I do not read either of the passages above, § 260 and the corresponding § 116, as saying that the individuals’ activity is „consciously aimed at none but the universal end”. Here, as elsewhere, the individuals in question have their activity „consciously aimed at” the universal together with and through the particular. Knox’s translation of this part of § 260, which in my view is much too free, expresses very well Ilting’s misreading of the § . We will see shortly whether, or to what extent, § 270 appears to support Ilting’s reading of it.
10 Hegel’s Concept of the State…, 102.
11 Ibid.
12 In von Griesheim’s Nachschrift of Hegel’s 1824/25 lectures, we read apropos of § 264: „… [the state] lives only in so far as both moments (family and civil society) are deve loped within it. The laws regulating these moments are the institutions of the rational order glimmering in them. But the ground and final truth of these institutions is spirit, their universal end and known objective” (Knox, 281; transl. modified. The German is in G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831. Edition und Kommentar in sechs Bänden von Karl-Heinz Ilting, Band 4, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1974, 638). – And apropos of § 265, Von Griesheim records Hegel as saying: „… the stability of the whole… is secured when universal affairs are the affairs of each member in his particular capacity. What is of the utmost importance is that the law of reason should be shot through and through by the law of particular freedom, and that my particular end should become identified with the universal end… The state is actual only when its members have a feeling of their own self-hood and it is stable only when public and private ends are identical” (Knox, 281; Vorlesung…, Ilting ed., 639.).
13 Hegel’s Concept of the State…, 290, n. 34.
14 Yet for Ilting, in these §§ 264 — 266, Hegel „barely goes beyond an authoritarian state patriotism of the Lutheran stamp” (Ibid. 108). § 266, in Knox’s translation, reads: „But (spirit) is objective and actual to itself not merely as this necessity and as a realm of appearance, but also as the ideality and the heart of this necessity. Only in this way is this substantive universality aware of itself as its own object and end, with the result that the necessity appears to itself in the shape of freedom as well” (163).
15 This is, I believe, a reference to „political virtue” (die politische Tugend), which in his Remark to § 257 Hegel calls „the willing of the absolute end in terms of thought” (Knox, 155), and which he defined less cryptically in his 1819/20 lectures as „not a virtue of feeling, but rather a willing of the universal end insofar as it is thought and known” (Henrich ed. cited in n. 7 above, 208). Cf. Hegel’s Remark to § 268: „Essentially, however, (patriotism) is the sentiment which, in the relationships of our daily life and under ordinary conditions, habitually recognizes that the community is one’s substantive groundwork and end” (Knox, 164). As „habitual volition”, Hegel’s „political virtue” would correspond to what Aquinas, e. g. would call the virtue of „general justice”, i.e. the constant disposition of will to serve the „common good”; see Summa Theologiae II— II, 58, 5–7; II—II, 58, 12, ad 1.
16 Von Griesheim records Hegel as saying in 1824/25 apropos of this § : „Patriotism is the result of the institutions of the state, but just as much is this sentiment the source, through and out of which the state has its activation (Betätigung) and its preservation.” Hegel, Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831, Ilting ed., vol. 4, 641.
17 In his lectures of 1824/25, Hegel, according to von Griesheim, put it this way: „Trust can have the form of national pride, that simple consciousness that I am a Prussian, an Englishman, that simple consciousness that I am a citizen of this state, that I am what the state is, that the state is my being. Thus trust has a quite general form, but this identity can also be a more developed insight. With that [more developed insight: J. O.] the state is not an other” (Ibid. 641–642).
18 Cf. Knox, 164–165. The German is: „Daß der Zweck des Staates das allgemeine Interesse als solches und darin als ihrer Substanz die Erhaltung der besonderen Interessen ist, ist 1. seine abstrakte Wirklichkeit oder Substantialität; aber sie ist 2. seine Notwen-digkeit, als sie sich in die Begriffsunterschiede seiner Wirksamkeit dirimiert, welche durch jene Substantialität ebenso wirkliche feste Bestimmungen, Gewalten sind; 3. eben diese Substantialität ist aber der als durch die Form der Bildung hindurchgegangene, sich wissende und wollende Geist” (Frankfurt/M. 1970, 415).
19 Ilting ed. cited in n. 4, 150.
20 Hegel, Vorlesung über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831, Ilting ed., vol. 2, 708; vol. 3, 726; vol. 4, 644.
21 Knox agreed that Hegel had all of the citizens in mind. At the point in his translation of § 270 where Hegel mentions „the forming process of education (Bildung)”, Knox added a translator’s note: „The history of civil society is the history of the education of this private judgment until the particular is brought back to the universal. Corporations and the working of the judicial system are educative institutions helping to produce this result. Hence the modern state which Hegel saw coming into being in his own day is substance and power, but a substance which has come to self-consciousness in its citizens. They recognize its law as their law — if they are educated enough to do so — and hence the state is not an arbitrary will or a blind necessity but the embodiment of the citizens’ freedom” (p. 365). Unfortunately, neither Hotho’s Nachschrift of 1822/23, nor von Griesheim’s of 1824/25 includes comments that could help decide the issue of Hegel’s meaning in § 270.